| A new Rev Solo 2 was delivered to me here in China a few days ago. I'd like to publicly thank the folks at Upton for providing me with the pickup to try. I was pretty sour on their first version of the Rev Solo, hated it for all the reasons listed in an earlier post in this thread. But I must say, the Rev Solo 2 is greatly improved. It's output is a great deal hotter, it's about the same as my Wilson. I can keep the volume controls on my Woods amp about the same, no need to max them out like before with the Rev 1. So far, I have not noticed any hum either. At least not in the club I'm currently playing in through the Woods, line out into a Countryman DI into the house system. After very carefuly installing it on my Czech-Ease I first tried it with the "R" side up. I did not have a lot of time to experiment with it's placement or different amp EQ settings before having to play my gig that night but decided to use it anyway. The usual band is piano, bass and drums but that night the pianist called in sick and sent a sub, a "too loud" guitar player. I never think my sound it's best when having to play with this guy, no matter what pickup I'm using so it was not a fair test of the Rev Solo 2, I simply have to play too loud to hear myself with this guy. The next night the band was back to it's regular format, piano trio. Before the gig I had a couple minutes to mess around with the pickup, trying different placements and all. With the "R" side up I thought the highs were a little bit "brittle" sounding for my tastes, so I flipped the pickup over. Please note that so far I'm using this pickup with out a pre-amp, just straight into the "upright bass" channel of my Woods M-100 8, which sounds fine with my Wilson. I found that once flipped over, the pickup sounded good, a sound I could get into for the night's work. The speaker that the club provides is big SWR 15, not ideal for double bass as it is shy in the mid-ranges and with it's tweeter on the highs are too "chirpy" sounding, I allways turn the tweeter off! But after boosting the mids on the amp I got a decent tone. The first thing I noticed is that the attack and decay of the notes is a lot like the bass's sound unplugged. You can really hear where the the notes start and it helps a lot to drive and anchor the band. The drummer really appriciated this, since the piano player we work with rushes like a S.O.B (typical!) and we often struggle to keep him in line. The pulse I set was a lot more apparent last night, and both the drummer and I thought the band sounded better. He make the comment, "Your sound is like Al McKibbon, very strong, almost like a drum". That was nice because I'm a big fan of his and was personally aquainted with the man the last few years of his life and often think of him when going for a good strong pizz tone. No, the pickup won't make you sound like your heros but it does quite accurately amplify what it hears, it's an honest sound. I ended up using it all night. Tonight I may try it with the Countryman DI in front of the amp, the Countryman's input is 10 meg. ohm I think, will interact with the pickup the same as a pre-amp will. Should be interesting to see what the results are on the gig.
I don't think that I'll be un-installing either my Wilson or my Realist in favor of the Rev 2. But it's sure nice to have a variety of options available to me to address conditions I'm likely to encounter as a traveling bass player, different rooms, rigs and all. I think that the Rev Solo 2 can and will be of use to me for many of the gigs I play. I've got a bunch coming up in Hong Kong over the next few months and my bass will be wearing it for sure. Based upon my experiance with it so far, I think it is likely to become my "go to" for an "old school" thump type of bass tone if the music calls for it.
The Upton folks have been very cool, given the fact that I dogged out their inital Rev Solo 1 in a public forum. They put a free Rev Solo 2 in the mail for me to try and it unfortunately got "lost in the mail", sent to Canada according to USPS instead of China! Upton sent another out to me immeadiatly after it became apparent that the first one would not arrive to me here in a timely manner. Grade A plus for service! I'd say that they have done a heck of a "make-good" as far as I'm concerned. | 
